Marius' nightmare
by AmZ
Summary: Marius' visions as he lies in a fever after the uprising.


Author's Note: This was originally a 15-minute challenge involving Marius and a dream. I edited it a little for grammar, but other than that, it's pretty much the same. So don't judge it very harshly.

* * *

When the hurly-burly was done, as Marius lay feverish in his in-between state, between visions of Cosette's face and pretty gowns, he was visited by dream of being lost in a torrential rainstorm in the bowels of the Île de la Cité. For what seemed like an eternity, the young man wandered the dark, gloomy labyrinth of the winding streets, struggling in vain to reckon how he got there, and how he should make his escape. There were no bridges to be seen; there was no water other than that which fell from the skies; the quays eluded him.

Marius squeezed through the deserted alleys, which became narrower and narrower which each passing, until his shoulders almost brushed the buildings on both sides. The eaves of those dismal structures overhung so close together that they formed a sort of dank plaster archways about two times the height of a man. He passed by the same run-down dram-shops and broken lamps, over and over again. Several times he heard the peal of Palais de Justice announcing the hour, but the hour would follow no logic - midday proclaimed after five o'clock, seventh hour following half past three...

Eventually, exhausted and soaked to the bone, Marius stopped walking at a corner and leaned against a half-rotten vertical stairway. His eyes fell on a _tapis-franc_ across the street - and, narrow as the street was, only several feet away. The entryway into dreary drinking den was illuminated by a lamp glowing faintly behind a glass globe of a reflector. On it, there was a strange sign painted in crooked red letters: instead of the usual advertisements of lodgings or meal specials, it proclaimed: _Dà oggi a noi la cotidiana manna_.

In the next moment, without any idea of how it happened, Marius found himself inside. He was seated on an uncomfortable straight-backed chair behind an enormous table which was so high that it made him recall eating with his grandfather as a small child. His legs dangled in mid-air and the filthy oilskin covering the table was almost under his chin. Despite its prodigious size, there were only two chairs by the table, one occupied by Marius and the other by a something like a huge rag doll: the abysmal lighting only allowed him to discern a woolen overcoat and a top hat, but nothing else.

Suddenly, the thing turned towards him, and Marius perceived that it was, indeed, an enormous rag doll. Not even that, properly speaking - just a coat and a hat, both of which appeared to be draped over a ghost.

The empty space between the hat and the coat collar seemed to be giving Marius an inquisitive look.

"Well?" asked the coat and hat in a low, hoarse voice, which Marius found familiar.

"Pardon, ... ugh... monsieur?" said Marius, attempting to calculate where the figure's eyes ought to be situated so to avoid looking directly at them.

"Are you here to talk to them or just passing through? Don't play the fool, now. You don't have much time, you know. Some of them are gone already."

"Who is gone?"

"Who do you think?" answered the coat irately. "Open your peepers and take a proper look around you."

As soon as the figure spoke, Marius realized that he was surrounded by his dead comrades. Combeferre and Courfeyrac were playing dominoes at the table immediately to his right; Enjolras sat in a massive armchair by the stove with a huge, woolen blanket covering his lap; and Grantaire was sitting right behind him and making strange, jerky hand motions, as if attempting to catch a fly buzzing around Enjolras' blonde head.

"Where are the others?" asked Marius, looking around.

"They're gone already. See?" answered the coat and pointed with its right sleeve towards a trail of wilted flowers leading across the room towards a door. Marius recognized Jean Prouvaire's favorite begonias.

"What shall I say to them?" he asked softly. The coat shrugged.

"Whatever you think they need to hear," it answered and suddenly folded in on itself. The hat fell onto the floor and rolled off into a corner.

"Friends!" said Marius somewhat too loudly and fell silent, searching for words appropriate for the occasion.

"Oh, shut up, you," answered Courfeyrac, putting down a domino.

"Yes, really now, Pontmercy," mumbled Combeferre. "It's bad enough that you showed up uninvited. Now the place will reek of live flesh for Lord knows how long."

"I just wanted to say..." Marius strained to discern Combeferre's face in the dark, but all that he could see were his glasses, or rather the faint glints of yellow light on the lenses. One of them appeared to be cracked. "I just wanted to say, I'm sorry I alone lived."

"Hah!" barked out Courfeyrac. "He's sorry!" he exclaimed and slammed another domino bone onto the table with a crack that was loud enough to pass for a pistol shot.

"You're not sorry. You can't lie here. We're past lies now." Combeferre turned towards Marius and Marius' blood congealed in his veins: Combeferre's glasses were grown straight into his face, like roots, and tears of blood rolled from beneath the cracked lenses.

"I'll make it up to you!" choked out Marius. "I'll write a book about you! You won't regret that I lived!"

Why won't Enjolras speak to me? thought Marius in a panic. Why won't he even look my way?

But Enjolras remained perfectly still in his chair.

"He'll write a book!" echoed Courfeyrac. "How'd you like that, fellas?"

_"Et moi, je ne me tuerais point: j'apprendrais l'orthographe, Pour leur ecrire en vers un bon epitaphe!"_ quoted Combeferre with mock solemnity. No one laughed.

"Then what will you have me do!" howled Marius, grasping his hair in handfuls and tearing. Tears stung his eyes. "How shall I appease you? I can't eat, I can't sleep - my wounds torment me, my mind is in constant turmoil! Your faces haunt my every waking moment! the disgust in your eyes rends my soul! Tell me what to do _now that all this has happened_!"

"Be honest, be kind," came the quiet voice of Enjolras. "History will take care of the rest."

"Enjolras," whispered Marius, struggling to make out his beloved friend's features through the sheen of tears veiling his eyes. "Enjolras..."

"Be honest, be kind," repeated Enjolras in the same hollow tone. He remained motionless on the chair in his dark, stove-warmed corner. "It's so cold here, Marius. If only you knew how cold..."

At that moment Grantaire, who had said not a word, roared and threw himself on the floor at Enjolras' knees. Marius suddenly understood that all of his strange gestures were simply desperate attempts to embrace Enjolras. An unseen wall held Grantaire at arm's length from his friend and leader. Grantaire's face was full of so much grief and helplessness that Marius felt as if he were intruding on a very private scene and lowered his eyes, staring instead at the gunk caked onto the oilskin covering his table.

The stains all had rather queer shapes to them. One looked like a decapitated eagle in flight; another resembled a _fleur-de-lis_ turned upside down; a third one reminded him of a dessicated pear. But the oddest one appeared to be a pair of black eyes with long symmetrical rays of lashes. That one looked entirely too realistic to be due to accident and not to some customer's boredom. Marius stared dumbly into the two round black holes burnt into the oilskin to represent the irises. Then the right eye winked at him, and Marius turned away in disgust, thinking: what, government spies even here?

He became aware of a queer sound. His first thought was that the deluge outside had shifted some tiles off the roof or forced a layer of plaster loose from an outer wall. The noise came again, this time louder. Marius turned his head and froze in his seat.

A crack had appeared in the base of Enjolras' skull. First it began traveling downwards along his spine; then it began branching out, spreading all along his white arms in delicate latticework, like bare tree branches against the cold winter sky. Grantaire sobbed and thrashed on the floor before Enjolras like a man possessed. Marius could not stand to watch any longer and hid his face in his hands. When he dared to look again, there was nothing left of Enjolras but a pile of rock chips and gray dust.

Marius woke with his nightshirt drenched in foul sweat. Grantaire's howl of animal despair still rang in his ears.


End file.
